McMahon Beats Shays 730-389 At GOP Convention

Primary Fight Looms

No Surprise As Republicans Endorse Candidate They Backed In 2010

Republican delegates at their state convention Friday night once again put their faith in U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon, although her contentious battle with rival Christopher Shays will continue until a mid-August primary.

McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, received 60.4 percent of the vote. Shays netted 32.2 percent, easily meeting the threshold — 15 percent of the total — to force a primary.

Three other candidates — Brian K. Hill of Hartford, Kie Westby of Southbury and Peter Lumaj of Fairfield — did not receive enough support to qualify.

Even while the party officials were still calculating the final votes, McMahon stepped to another microphone that was not on the main stage to deliver her acceptance speech.

"We're going to send the first woman senator to Washington in the history of Connecticut,'' she said in the speech that she said she would have made from the podium. "Connecticut, we're tired of waiting.''

"This has been an incredibly exciting evening for me,'' said McMahon.

She thanked her husband, Vince, who stood nearby on the convention floor and "who is always in my corner.'' Vince McMahon shook hands with Shays after the contest was over.

Her supporters soon began chanting, "No primary! No primary!''

"We know our economy is not working because Americans are not working,'' McMahon said. "We are going to move Washington out of the doldrums that it's in. … We are going to get people back to work and get our economy stimulated.''

The official tally was 730 votes for McMahon, 389 for Shays, 62 for Hill, 22 for Lumaj and 5 for Westby.

Hill, an attorney who ran as a write-in candidate in 2010, said he hopes to garner enough signatures to force his way onto the primary ballot, as state election law permits.

Asked how it felt to have a second convention endorsement, McMahon told reporters that it was "just as exciting as it was the first time, I think even more so."

"This was just a really, really good night,'' McMahon said as the votes were still being tallied. Her husband; daughter, Stephanie McMahon; and son-in-law, Paul Levesque, who performs under the stage name Triple H, posed for photos with delegates.

McMahon said voters didn't really get to know her the last time around. "I'm spending a great deal of time now [in] smaller groups, so [voters] can ask me questions and learn what I stand for. They know I'm approachable and we're really making significant progress."

McMahon said she intends to focus her campaign on Chris Murphy, the Democrats' endorsed candidate, but will also continue to target Shays. "Chris Murphy and Chris Shays have very similar voting records,'' she said.

On the convention floor as the votes were still coming in, Shays, a former U.S. Representative from the 4th District, said he would support Republicans in November — win or lose.

Shays' supporters said that simply qualifying for the Aug. 14 primary was an accomplishment because he got into the race late.

Noting that he has won 18 elections in his state and federal career, Shays said, "I know how to win elections.''

The convention lacked the drama of the 2010 version, when McMahon surprised most party observers by seizing the nomination from the favorite, former Congressman Rob Simmons. McMahon wound up losing the general election to Democrat Richard Blumenthal, despite investing $50 million of her own money into her campaign.

This time, McMahon was expected to win — the only mystery was by how much.

Before the voting, Shays and McMahon made sharply different pitches. McMahon emphasized her outsider credentials. A brief video that played on a large screen inside the hall at the Connecticut Convention Center repeatedly stressed that McMahon is not a lawyer but rather a successful businesswoman who has created hundreds of jobs.

"Linda McMahon is the only candidate with a plan, a fresh point of view and the experience to get the job done,'' said Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, one of five people who addressed the convention on McMahon's behalf.

McMahon said she learned much from her 2010 run, her first bid for elective office. Her 2010 campaign was notable for its lack of support from women voters. Although she would have been the state's first female U.S. senator, polls repeatedly showed her lagging behind Blumenthal among women, who seemed particularly turned off by her ties to the professional wrestling industry and its reputation for violence and sexually exploitative images of women.

This time, she has made capturing the women's vote a priority. For the past few months, she has held informal living room gatherings with women across the state in an attempt to win them over.